{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/102/1020796.htm","path":"chr/ecf/102/1020796.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/102/1020796.htm","text":"Chapter 16.\u2014Rule for Interpreting Commands and Prohibitions.\n24. If the sentence is one of command, either forbidding a crime or vice, or enjoining an act of prudence or benevolence, it is not figurative. If, however, it seems to enjoin a crime or vice, or to forbid an act of prudence or benevolence, it is figurative. \u201cExcept ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,\u201d says Christ, \u201cand drink His blood, ye have no life in you.\u201d 1867 This seems to enjoin a crime or a vice; it is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord, and that we should retain a sweet and profitable memory of the fact that His flesh was wounded and crucified for us. Scripture says: \u201cIf thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink;\u201d and this is beyond doubt a command to do a kindness. But in what follows, \u201cfor in so doing thou shall heap coals of fire on his head,\u201d 1868 one would think a deed of malevolence was enjoined. Do not doubt, then, that the expression is figurative; and, while it is possible to interpret it in two ways, one pointing to the doing of an injury, the other to a display of superiority, let charity on the contrary call you back to benevolence, and interpret the coals of fire as the burning groans of penitence by which a man\u2019s pride is cured who bewails that he has been the enemy of one who came to his assistance in distress. In the same way, when our Lord says, \u201cHe who loveth his life shall lose it,\u201d 1869 we are not to think that He forbids the prudence with which it is a man\u2019s duty to care for his life, but that He says in a figurative sense, \u201cLet him lose his life\u201d\u2014that is, let him destroy and lose that perverted and unnatural use which he now makes of his life, and through which his desires are fixed on temporal things so that he gives no heed to eternal. It is written: \u201cGive to the godly man, and help not a sinner.\u201d 1870 The latter clause of this sentence seems to forbid benevolence; for it says, \u201chelp not a sinner.\u201d Understand, therefore, that \u201csinner\u201d is put figuratively for sin, so that it is his sin you are not to help.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II: On Christian Doc...","type":"page"}